We at the Return to Nature apothecary are elated to be offering our 4th year of handcrafted herbal goods to the community through our Herbal CSA program. Our Herbal CSA is loaded with herbal goodies, full of wildcrafted, and organically grown and purchased ingredients to help you maintain health throughout the year!

You can join our herbal csa subscription by signing up for a full year of our love infused goods, which begins in April 2018 with our first of 4 packages sent to you throughout the year!

During each season, you’ll receive a care package of various organic and wildcrafted goods for your everyday healing needs. Throughout the year, you will get to sample our delicious and healing tea blends, raw chocolate, elixirs, tinctures, salves and so much more!

About the CSA model: The benefit of being part of a CSA is, each dollar spent becomes a vote toward the community itself choosing what thrives, and helps provide local business the funding it needs for supplies throughout the year.

Joining our yearly CSA is a great way to sample a variety of our goods throughout the seasons while building your own home apothecary as an active participant in our growing herbal community. We are eager to hear your questions, feedback or suggestions and look forward to creating and sharing the magic with you all!

*Sign up by December 21st 2017 and receive $12 off the yearly subscription cost.

Only 20 shares are available for 2018…don’t miss out on the magic!

How to Order: To be part of this unique opportunity, Send the total payment for the Package of your choice to: paypal.me/returntonature.

For questions, suggestions or feedback email us at: HerbalCSA@ReturntoNature.us

The program starts in March of 2018! Let us know if you have any questions!

Topics of This Years Class Includes:

– Wildcrafters Materia Medica: Learning the healing and edible applications of many wild plants throughout the year, which bodily organs the plants and constituents effect, and how to harvest in their proper time and way.

– Constitutional Herbalism Practice: Plant Sense Meditations: Direct field practice of awareness of the 6 tastes of Ayurveda and how that directly correlates to medicinal application and organ systems, study of the doctrine of correspondences and signatures, and how to correlate our sense perception with medicinal applications of plants.

– Herbal Medicine Making with Backyard Allies: Students will receive step by step directions and live streams to make common helpful home remedies together, from infused oils to tinctures, and delicious meals.

– Monthly Live Webinar videos: On the 4th Wednesday of each month (see dates below) with assignments, discussion, Q+A, and seasonal plant walk awareness – Each video will be available to watch live, or a playback file will be posted in the group, and you will be able to attend the “playback only”, but live is recommended.

– Access to our “Return to Nature – Monthly Online Mentorship 2017” Facebook Group: Here we will discuss plant identification, projects, and ask questions, as well as all learn together.

Heres a look at yesterdays live class at Enright Ridge Urban Eco-Village, in Cincinnati, Ohio where we will be explored the wild foods, mushrooms and medicinal plants of their backyards, forest edges, and woodland habitats.

If you appreciate these teachings, please consider making any donation to Paypal.me/returntonature help this mission sustain itself and continue to bring these teachings to you!

Also, check out lots more foraging and herbalism articles, videos, and upcoming classes at www.returntonature.us

Huge thanks to everyone who came out to yesterday’s class! It was a lot of fun to share with such knowledgeable Plant people.

There’s a great scene developing in Cincinnati Ohio, and Enright is an awesome hub for it.

They have around 40 acres of forest, farm, and housing, which is dedicated to community, sustainability, and waking up the people.

There were so many plants to discuss, some of them were gill over the ground, daylily (seen here), heal all which was still in flower, and one of my favorite wild fruits, hackberry.

It’s inspiring to see such a project on the outskirts of such a developed city…

Huge thanks to all who donated to our 24 hr facebook Foragemobile fundraiser!

Your donations helped me compensate for part of the cost of the solar set up, and gave me funds to plan the winter tour (dates below) with lots of webinars and online classes, as well as in person classes and live question and answers from all throughout my travels, all with the help of solar power!

Also, the Return to Nature #foragemobile is headed on a westward teaching tour this winter!

The solar set-up now enables me to have a multimedia set up to turn the Foragemobile into a news van for podcasting and writing, and inviting podcast guests along the way, as well as offering live webcasts and workshops from my travels. Stay tuned for the launch of the Return to Nature Radio podcast…

I’m working on a winter westward tour, starting in Monroe, New York at Ananda Ashram on October 28-29, Foraging and Herbalism Retreat (The Yoga of Plants)​ where I will be teaching a weekend foraging and herbalism retreat to start the tour off; I hope to see you there!

Join us this weekend for a weekend of foraging and herbalism teachings as my grand finale class on the east coast before I head west for the winter…

This weekend, at Ananda Ashram (www.anandaashram.org) we will explore lots of medicinal and edible wild plants, mushrooms, and explore herbal principles from medicine making, to healing, and constitutional herbal principles which apply to our yoga practice.

Join us for both classes, or stay the weekend!

Class Schedule:
Saturday from 2-5
Sunday from 2-5

$40 per class. Students can come for both classes at a $10 discount, or come to each individual class.

Stay for dinner after the class for a $10 donation,
Accommodations for staying at Ananda Ashram can be made by calling them at: (845) 782-5575

Email Dan@returntonature.us with any questions.

There is also a campsite down the street called beaver pond campground foe $25 per night.

There is a suggested $25 per class. And we will always explore different plants, nuts, mushrooms, fruits, and seeds in each and every class, and as always, bring your specific herbalism and foraging questions for us to explore in depth!

Email me to RSVP for the meeting location at Dan@Returntonature.us

Please tag your friends and help spread the word of the Return to Nature revolution!

Heres a look at Datura stramonium. I harvest the leaf for topical ointments.

Datura is not a plant to take lightly, and is heavily misunderstood as a medicinal plant. Meanwhile the opiate epidemic is running rampant, and this plant is an amazing topical pain remedy.

Maybe if people have some botanical potentials for understanding how to alleviate their pain, without using fear based propaganda against plants, we could have some alternative options to addictive pharmaceutical opiates.

Scopolamine and atropine are the main “active constituent alkaloids” in many plants of the nightshade family, namely datura, Brugmansia, and belladonna, henbane, they are medicinal in low doses, and very toxic in high doses and synthetic concentrates can be deadly.

Some people try to “trip” or get high on datura, but are usually traumatized and disappointed. There are mainly 3 datura species; D. Stramonium, D. innoxia and D. metel. It is really not hallucinogenic and is actually more commonly classified as a deleriant. Is very off putting, disorienting, and very hard to make meaning from, and it can also be very dangerous because one can easily convince themselves that their delusions are true.

Datura and other brugmansia species (related) also contain tropanes as do most if not all solanaceous plants. And even In our drug phobic culture we don’t even bother to make them illegal because it’s generally felt that these were more like poisoning than tripping.

Yet, despite our modern day fear, misuse, and the failed “war on drugs” whole civilizations have built themselves around this kind of experience such as with Southern California tribes; the Catalina and louisenyo, and the Chumash to name a few. The Tolache religion of Mexico is also based around Jimson weed.

I’m super grateful to my dad for helping me out today, and now I’m looking into potentials for an insulation layer under this flooring before I fasten the flooring. It needs to be waterproof, and insulative. Im looking into the possibility of rockwool which is like wool, but supposedly it doesn’t absorb moisture, which can be a big problem with any insulation against metal.

Do you have any suggestions #vandweller and #diy culture?

I’m also super excited to start planning for the #solarpanel set up at Antinanco Earth Arts School​ where a good friend Alex, and I, have been working on plans to rig all the vans needs with a solar set up!

We will offer that workshop both online and in person, in early October and I plan to blog that process for everyone to also have the capacity to learn how to go solar. More to come on that soon!